"Children do not need to be made to learn about the world, or shown how. They want to, and they know how." -John Holt

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Old Sturbridge Village re-created @ LEAP's 1st Co-op

Even though we missed the trip to OSV last week, these monkeys of mine had no qualms about diving in head first to the activities planned by my LEAP mates to do some hands-on pioneer type stuff.

We had an entire fleece fresh off the sheep to start with.
Of which the kids combed out sections of it to then twist into yarn bits... Here Gabriel demonstrates the many positive uses for inherting monkey toes.Then they dyed their bits in steaming hot bins of water that tumeric and red onion skins were steeping in. Only one kid was burned in the process!THEN, since we really never got to the actual yarn spinning, the kids used ready-made skeins to weave on cardboard looms.
Duing fiber art breaks, the kids made butter...Jumped rope...And tried some home made stilts (that I missed). All in all, a raging success!

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"By nature people are learning animals. Birds fly; fish swim; humans think and learn. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do - and all we need to do - is to give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for, listen respectfully when they feel like talking, and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest."
John Holt
"In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it...and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself." -Grace Llewellyn
"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
George Bernard Shaw
Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the JOY. It's in the joy. ~Anne Ohman
"How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?" -Henry D. Thoreau